I Don't Really Understand
by Katagelophobia
Summary: Jack's life seldom made any sense, but he accepted it without question, mostly because he couldn't remember a life any less peculiar than the one he was living then. (One-shot)


I always woke up to a whirring sound, like motors running somewhere off in the distance. I usually assumed it was a lumberjack or something out there in the woods, wielding a mighty chainsaw.

Chainsaws were awesome, and sometimes I wondered why I used an axe to chop wood. It was probably due to expense. Likely the same reason I kept one of those old spin-dial phones, too. I had a fancy cell phone back in the city, I think, but I don't fully remember. My childhood there was really a kind of hazy memory.

I slid out of bed and didn't have to even prepare for the day; I awoke all ready. Don't know why I slept in my overalls, but I did. The door didn't even creak when I stepped outside, and I filled my watering can for a day's work. The story books seemed to always claim that there was weeding and pruning and certain amounts of sunlight necessary to grow crops, but I never had that problem. Maybe it was the soil?

I didn't know. I never did much thinking, especially in social situations, where all the townsfolk would just go on with their conversations as if I was talking, even though I barely felt the need to say anything. Most of the time, when I did say something, the words I spoke were very sensible, but sometimes I said the most absurd things for absolutely no reason. Those instances felt like a dream, though, and all the villagers seem convinced they never happened. Must be some odd sort of deja vu.

My work was soon done, the cows milked, the chickens fed, and all my produce dropped into a box that must've been much bigger than it seemed because it could hold fifty bushels of tomatoes and still have room for more.

My feet carried me to town, rucksack bouncing against my back as I strolled by a trotting Harris who nodded warmly towards me as he continued his rounds. Everyone around me must have been extremely superficial, because all I did was give them some gifts and they were practically treating me like their brother. Except for the girls, of course, they blushed constantly and batted their eyelashes in my general direction.

All I did was give these people a few flowers and they worshipped the ground I walked.

Country folk are weird.

Everybody kept talking about the storm last night, and I felt they had said the exact same thing the last time there was a storm. My mind drifted off to why exactly I wasn't able to go outside during a typhoon. It's not like people noticed my daydreaming, an awful lot had never even heard me speak before.

I was carrying on a one-sided kind of "conversation" with an ever-bright bachellorette, whose only interest for some reason seemed to be me, when suddenly she was talking fast and cutting off sentences and then abruptly quitting our chat without giving me any time to process it, although it felt like everybody regurgitated the same words every day.

It was a sunny afternoon, just a few minutes past one, when I heard that familiar whirring sound. The sound was somehow less distant, though, and I didn't move, didn't even blink, because everything around me had just stopped.

I was looking in my rucksack, the inventory of so many items that I was pretty sure couldn't all fit in an ordinary backpack.

I then switched to looking at all my statistics, all my income from my ranch. I was a millionaire. I'd been working on the farm for fifty years. Logic told me something was odd about that, but it was one of those things I just accepted, like my inability to ever leave the village.

Then there was my save screen. I had no idea what it was or what it meant, but I knew through some kind of primal instinct that it was what made my actions actually have value.

For a moment, I wondered what would happen if I didn't save. I saved anyway, out of habit.

There was that long while where I was stilled and had no thoughts, actions, feelings, which happened every time I saved. No one else around me moved, either. Eventually, the wait was over, and I had renewed purpose. I dashed home.

Inside, kind of near my door, was a chest that held all kinds of things. I reached in, grabbed a feather I had forgotten I had in there, and went back outside. I hadn't the faintest clue what I was doing, but I was fairly excited. I entered the town library.

I pulled the cerulean feather out of my pocket and held it above my head, running over to this shy, quiet girl who tended to speak all fluttery and referenced to romantic things around me a lot.

I walked right up to her, she saw it.

Her eyes widened.

Her mouth hung open.

She began to say something.

"I-"

_Click_

I was back in front of the vibrant girl, who giggled and walked past me. I checked my watch; it was just a few minutes past noon. Neither my hands nor my rucksack carried any sort of feather.

Huh.

Odd.


End file.
